articles

“Defining Goals and Concerns” and “Deciding Who Should Be Participants” – Joseph Dumas & Janice Redish

Before you begin testing it is important to set your primary evaluation goals and concerns. Once those have been defined, it will be possible to plan a usability test accordingly. Dumas & Redish raise the following processes: making choices among goals and concerns; moving from general concerns to specific ones; and understanding sources of goals and concerns.

Terri Timely’s Synesthesia

“Conducting a Usability Evaluation” – Patrick Jordan

After having listed various evaluation methods, Jordan provides a guideline for choosing the most appropriate method(s) depending on the level at which a prototype is developed and shows an example of how such testing might be conducted.

“Evaluating Usability Throughout Design and Development” – Joseph Dumas & Janice Redish

Joseph Dumas & Janice Redish analyze the potential benefits of combining various evaluation methods as complementary tools for usability testing in the context of usability engineering.

Paper Prototyping: The Fast and Easy Way to Design and Refine User Interfaces – Carolyn Snyder

Carolyn Snyder proposes a definition of paper prototyping as 'a variation of usability testing where representative users [...] [interact] with a paper version of the interface that is manipulated by a person "playing computer" ' (italicized in original, p.4).

The aim of her book is to extend the practice of paper prototyping to a variety of HCI platforms for non-expert users to adopt as a practical tool for creating and testing their products during the development process.

An Introduction to Usability (continued…) – Patrick Jordan

Designing for usability is a user-centered approach to design. Jordan lays out the different considerations to keep in mind during the design process and proposes a set of methods (some empirical, others non-empirical) that can be used as testing tools and discusses the advantages and disadvantages that come with each method. His writing allows designers to understand better that there are different ways of testing users and that some styles are more appropriate depending on the content of tasks involved in using a given product or interface and its relation to a demographic/technographic target audience.